


Far From Home

by PrairieDawn



Series: The Importance of Choosing the Right Pediatrician [9]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Intelligent arthropods, Loneliness, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: Sarek, Away Mission, depressionWhen Sarek agreed to lead negotiations with the Plurans, living among them for six months, he underestimated how hard it would be.
Relationships: Amanda Grayson/Sarek
Series: The Importance of Choosing the Right Pediatrician [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/870771
Comments: 15
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This prompt and the next lent themselves to being paired. Amanda's point of view tomorrow.

Sarek ought to be completely satisfied with his current circumstances. The negotiations with the Pluran leadership were going well, extraordinarily so given the Plurans were insectoids with a social and political structure that had taken considerable time to unravel. His assignment to lead the diplomatic team had been a sign of the High Council’s confidence and favor, and would, assuming he performed to expectations, lead to promotion and with that, greater opportunities for Michael and Spock.

His decision to spend six months away from his family, to sacrifice time with them in the present to secure their future had been entirely logical, and yet he found himself expending much more energy than he should in simply completing the tasks required each day. It was disconcerting. His weekly medical exams showed hormonal imbalances, drops in serotonin and in dopamine response, and raised levels of stress hormones. He attempted to adjust them through meditation with only partial success.

A chorus of taps and clicks roused him from his musings. Three Plurans entered his tiny room, nearly filling it with their twined together bodies. It wasn’t so much that they did not approve of Sarek’s desire for privacy as that it was foreign enough to them that they forgot about it. Continuously. He rose from the heap of scented wood shavings and moss that served as bed and meditation mat. “We expected you forty minutes ago,” one of them said, the UT providing a translation of the Plurans’ units for time.

He had lost track of time again. The perpetual dimness of the Pluran’s underground city played havoc with his time sense and, he suspected, left him lacking in energy. “I had much to consider,” he said by way of apology. “I believe we are scheduled to discuss the construction of the orbital spaceport.”

They clicked their agreement, but waited, blocking his path out the door. When Plurans traveled together, they wound their bodies around one another, often carrying on quiet conversations into each other’s ear patches as they moved. They expected Sarek to do the same, but he was neither anatomically equipped to slither, nor interested in maintaining physical contact with several beings at a time. To say so directly would be rude, so he merely waited until one of them gingerly reached out a multiclawed limb. The claws wrapped around his wrist and tugged.

Sarek followed, having agreed to the compromise despite his misgivings at having those claws, which could easily remove his hand if their owner became distracted, encircling his wrist. The Plurans had at first thought he had lost his family in some tragic accident, given that he had not brought them with him. He had made his first of many, fortunately minor cultural errors in explaining that his wife and children would not have been able to adjust to the Pluran’s city or culture, of which the beings were quite proud.

They passed doorways labeled with scents rather than visual symbols until they reached the large, unfurnished chamber where negotiations were to take place. He sank to the floor and set his translator and recorder in the hollow of his lap to wait for all one hundred thirty Plurans present to introduce themselves. Logic gave him a purpose and a retreat, but it had not been enough for some weeks. He suspected he would not be truly himself again until he had access to sunlight and solitude, to refuge from the omnipresent dampness, to a bed that wasn’t a pile of sawdust with his cloak spread over it.

He needed to see his wife and children in person. He called their faces and voices to mind while the roll call proceeded. Amanda, warm and bright, always in motion and with something intelligent to say. Solomon safely moved into Amanda’s parents’ care, where he would become whatever his heritage permitted him to be. Michael, who took after Sarek more than either of his biological children; brilliant, serious, and focused. And Spock, who was just beginning to show who he might be as he grew. Nearly as emotional as his older brother, but making an admirable effort to gain proper control. The boy’s curiosity about everything reminded him of his own youth before he had set aside the sciences to pursue diplomatic service.

Thoughts of his family put a veneer of peace over his mental unrest, enough so that when the four lead Pluran diplomats draped themselves around him like many legged stoles he maintained the control to prevent himself from recoiling.

Another long day of negotiations began.


	2. The Landmark Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fill for yesterday: Amanda, Stars, dad.
> 
> Amanda and the children wait for Sarek to return from a long diplomatic mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sweet and kinda hurt/comforty

Amanda awoke this time to the sound of movement in the kitchen. She sighed, blinking up at the ceiling of her darkened room. Sleep had been a fickle visitor tonight, dropping by for a few minutes at a time, but abandoning her more often than not. Perhaps she could try a cup of tea and offer a hand to whichever child was puttering in the kitchen. It would be better than lying there awake.

Amanda was accustomed to Sarek being gone for weeks at a time, but six months was the longest they’d been apart. She could feel their connection, stretched taut and aching, and knew Spock was also affected by his father’s absence. No one was sleeping well with both Sarek and Solomon gone.

She pulled on her robe over her gown. The kitchen lights were on but turned low, and Spock and Michael were sitting side by side at the low table with cups of steaming tea and the hybrid of _kreyla_ and oatmeal raisin cookies the three of them had invented that afternoon. They hadn’t yet noticed her.

Spock had his face half down inside the cup and his legs swinging under the table. Michael, her hair cut short and straightened just last week into a facsimile of a Vulcan haircut, said something quiet, but stern to him and he stilled and sat up.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked them.

Neither one answered. It was a rhetorical question anyway. She slid into a chair at the table. Spock’s hands shaped, “I want Father.”

He didn’t use his signs unless he was very tired or too distraught to speak. Amanda said, “So do I. The house feels empty without him. And Sol. What about you, Michael?”

“I was studying.”

“Couldn’t sleep either, huh.”

“It is illogical to waste time pursuing sleep indefinitely.”

“I suppose you’re right. It should be cool outside and the stars are out. Would you like to lie on the roof with me and look at the stars?”

Both sets of eyes lit up with interest, though Michael didn’t immediately agree to the activity, unlike Spock, who was out of his chair and standing by Amanda’s side in a second. After a few seconds, Michael said, “I do have astronomy to study. It would be logical for both of us to continue to memorize the positions of the stars as a navigational aid prior to our _Kahs-wans_.”

The outing logically justified, Amanda led the children to the roof. Why Sarek had thought allowing the children to participate in such a dangerous activity, especially in the current political climate, was beyond her understanding. But if she were being fair, both children had thrown themselves fully into the preparations and were getting along better than they ever had.

She pulled three meditation mats, each large enough to lie down on, out of a chest on the roof, handing one to each of the children. They lay them out side by side and settled onto their backs to look up at the stars. When Amanda had first come to Vulcan, she’d expected the constellations to look very different from the ones in New York, but it turned out eleven light years was too short a distance to make all that much difference in the positions of the bright, but distant stars that made up most of the constellations.

She traced down the familiar lines of Orion to the left knee. “That’s Saiph. Your father is not there, but the star the Pluran homeworld circles is in the same direction, much closer to us, but so much dimmer we can’t see it.”

“Saiph is seven hundred sixteen light years away,” Spock said.

“So it is, and K’kepit is thirty-four light years away.”

“I know, mother,” Spock mumbled sleepily.

“So Saiph is like a landmark,” Michael said.

“Yes, like a landmark. It makes me feel closer to him, lying out here and looking at that star.”

“That’s not logical,” Michael said. 

“No, it’s not,” she said a little sadly. “But many worthwhile things aren’t.”

“Does father miss us?” Spock said softly beside her.

“Missing someone is an emotion, and father is not burdened by emotion,” Michael corrected primly.

Amanda sighed. “Your father does not show his emotions so openly, but I am sure that he misses all of us.”

“Is he okay?” Michael asked.

“As far as I can tell, yes. But I’m not good at reading the bond over such a distance.”

She half expected Spock to comment, but a soft, hitching snore beside her let her know that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. 

“Can we put up the insect net and sleep here?” Michael asked.

“Is that logical?” she teased.

“Our rooms are too warm and the breeze is cooling. Spock is already asleep, so if we were to return inside we would have to wake or carry him.”

“Well reasoned, Michael,” she chuckled. “The sunrise should wake you in time for school.”

“Ugh,” Michael said. “I mean, I have found the adjustment challenging. I am sure that in time I will be able to meet the expectations of my instructors and peers.”

Amanda carefully didn’t say, again, that Michael didn’t have to become Vulcan to live among them. She knew her daughter used logic as a way to bury her grief and trauma, and unfortunately every Vulcan she met encouraged that behavior. Instead she wormed an arm around her shoulders so Michael’s head rested on her chest. “You have always exceeded my expectations, Michael,” she said. “In every way.”


End file.
